Here we have Peter himself saying that all believer are "a royal priesthood." All believers have a part in this holy priesthood, and therefore all, including both clergy and "laity" do "priestly service."

 

You keep acting as if statements referring to the community of the Church are actually addressed to each individual member. You have to stop thinking like a 16th Century nominalist skeptic and start thinking like a believing Christian! Were all of the Israelites priests? NO! Even before the Golden Calf, only the male heads of households were considered to be such. The statement quoted by St. Peter was originally referring to Israel which certainly had a well demarcated priesthood. Stop retrojecting Protestant values into the Bible and start submitting yourself to Biblical values!

 

When it comes to Paul's "priestly service," did he wear the sacerdotal garments of the Aaronitic priesthood?

 

St. Paul was not an Aaronic priest. Neither was Christ. They are Melchizedech Priests. We do not know if the apostles wore special garments for worship, but it stand to reason that they might have. Even so, it would have had nothing to do with the Jewish Temple Cultus. Eventually the Church under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit did adopt badges of office. I fail to see the relevance of your question.

 

Essentially how does Rome define this royal priesthood of all believers?

 

As I explained it previously. Look, there is a paradox here: "holy nation/royal priesthood." Normally, nations are royal and priesthoods are holy. The point that God was making in the OT was that Israel was to be ruled by His Word mediated through the priests. In fact this was the case in early Israel's history since all of the Judges were of priestly descent. The same thing was supposed to be true among the Christians. Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Every nation should submit to his rule as mediated by the Church's Magisterium.

 

Yes, I have no problem at all with the idea that Christ functioned as a priest at the Last Supper, although when we get to the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the Writer goes into the priestly ministry of Christ at some length, we only read of His priesthood in direct connection with His death.

 

Oh?

 

Now, Arie, tell me when was it that Jesus was "offered ONCE to bear the sins of many"? Not on Calvary. He utters not one word there to that effect. The ONE time that he offers himself for sin is at the Last Supper. According to Hebrews 9:28, that is also the ONLY time. Also I think you are making the typical Protestant error of confusing the death of the victim with the act of sacrifice. You must read your OT much more carefully. The animals were usually killed by someone other than the priests outside the sanctuary. The offering per se was made with certain parts of the corpse by the priest on the altar. Technically, the life of the victim was not offered on the altar, but the blood and flesh which represented it. There were also unbloody sacrifices such as the "meat" offering (which was actually a fried griddle cake) and the libation offering of wine. The essence of sacrifice was not death but the sharing with God of gifts any of which were consumed in part by the worshipper, the priest and the priest's family as a meal in common with God. Don't forget Hebrews 13:10 Heb "We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat." Which altar (Greek: thusia-steleirion -"sacrifice table") is the author referring to? Why the Eucharist of course!

 

There is no real suggestion in the accounts of the Last Supper that Jesus made the wine into His blood. Hebrews were big on symbolism, but the people who came into the Church when the Church had become de-hebrewized could only understand the words of Jesus at the Last Supper as "magical words."

 

The words of My Lord and Savior are not magical. They are Divine! This is the same one who said "Let there be light!" and there was light! He said he would rise from the dead and he did! This is the differences between Protestants and Catholics. We Catholics accept the words of Jesus on face value. We believe what he says to us. Many Protestants, on the other hand, want to hold your skeptical nominalist worldview as primary and refuse to grant God mastery over the world he created. It is always annoying to me when Christians want to have one foot in the agnostic world and one foot in the Christian world. You must be one or the other. Jesus did not say, "This is like my body" or "This represents my body." He said, "This IS my body." He emphasized this in John 6:

 

Jesus said that his flesh was REALLY food and his blood was REALLY drink. That is good enough for me. Of course this is too spiritual a teaching for the merely carnal man to accept. The words that Jesus gives us here are "spirit and life": They can only be understood via the Holy Spirit, not by human reason. If Christ had only meant these things figuratively, he would have condescended to the crowd and explained it to them. He did not. He insisted that he meant EXACTLY what he said and many CARNAL people left him because they could not accept his spiritual teaching. This tells you PRECISELY what I think of the "spirituality" of your "reformers."

 

Suppose that you tell me where in the LXX that you find this. According to Arnt and Gingrich's Greek lexicon, a"anamnesin" refers only to remembering.

 

First of all, I would recommend to you a series of lectures done by James Jordan, a reformed minister in the Niceville, Florida area on the etymology and usage of anamnesis and its Hebrew equivalents. He did a series of conferences on the Priesthood and the temple several years ago which will show you what I mean. Click on this to go to his web page:

 

Biblical Horizons

 

Now as to the LXX usage, these passages are key:

 

That should be enough to make the point. The term "remembrance" has a strong sacrificial connotation. The priests would perform the rituals of the Temple to bring remembrance (both to the People and to God) of the terms of the covenant. That is what the Eucharist means to us.

 

The 95 Thesis of Luther were about pardons and indulgences. For further elucidation read "The Pardoner's Tale" in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or read William Langland's "The Vision of Piers Plowman."

 

I see. History isn't good enough for you. You want me to judge the Church by FICTION! You show me some HISTORICAL evidence to back up your charges, not slanderous fiction. This is the second time you have thrown up these made-up tales as examples of Catholic life before the "reform." I am surprised you have not mentioned Boccacio's Decameron Nights. Might I recommend that you read Eamon Duffy's recent and powerful book "The Stripping of the Altars" to see how your "reform" desecrated Catholic England? It is the HISTORICAL rejoinder to your FICTIONAL puffery.

 

The pardons and indulgences were used to pay back loans from the Fugger bankers. Their main purpose was to raise funds

 

You mean like you had at your church bake sales? Or the Girl Scouts with their cookies? Have you no shame? Can't you get it through your head that we live in a REAL world, not in some Gnostic fantasy land where money grows on trees and the Church never needs to worry about fund raising? There is nothing wrong with raising funds for a good cause by soliciting funds via a religious outreach. We ALL do it with the collection plate every Sunday, including you guys. Please note that the Indulgence attached to the support of the St. Peter's Basilica was VOLUNTARY and that you didn't HAVE to make a donation to get it. There were also several other ways of obtaining an Indulgence if one wanted to. Also, the pardoning of sins has NOTHING to with indulgences. That was available for free with sacramental confession anytime the people wanted or needed it.

 

Since when has II Peter been a Papal Encyclical?

 

Since Pope St. Peter the First wrote it!

 

If the essence of priesthood was fatherhood, then how did this young man become as one of Micah's sons (Judges 7:11)?

 

Excellent! You picked up on the paradox! Priesthood is SPIRITUAL fatherhood. Thus a son can become a priest to his own biological father who will then address him as his spiritual father.

 

Again, not really accurate. While it was true that the Patriarchs offered sacrifices, the Priesthood of Aaron was instituted beginning in Exodus 28:1, whereas the Golden Calf incident did not take place until Exodus 32.

 

You mean the HIGH priesthood of Aaron and his sons. Even in pre-Golden Calf Israel there was a special priesthood besides from the priesthood of the believer. This more strongly supports my interpretation of 2Peter, eh?

 

Also note what Moses says in Exodus 32:

 

After this incident, the services in the tabernacle were restricted ONLY to the Levites and to no one else. Prior to that, every father served as a priest to his family just as did Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

 

Yes, provided that the new birth, of which baptism is a symbol, has really taken place.

 

So now you are going to DARE to sit in judgment on the validity of a Christian's baptism based upon whether or not he conforms to YOUR man-made doctrinal standards? It seems I remember a wise man once saying:

 

[Mat 7:1] "Judge not, that you be not judged. [Mat 7:2] For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. [Mat 7:3] Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? [Mat 7:4] Or how can you say to your brother, `Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye? [Mat 7:5] You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

 

For someone who has an "interest" in history, you really know very little about it. First of all, Alister McGrath is no Catholic. He is an evangelical Anglican of low Church bent. I knew him when I was in England and he would be amused at your erroneous assumptions about him.

 

Secondly, the Jansenists were condemned because of their FALSE interpretations of St. Augustine which any competent historian could point out to you. Again, I refer you to Fr. Hugo's book "St. Augustine on Nature, Sex, and Marriage" for a competent scholarly argument drawn from St. Auggy's own words. If you don't like him, read Peter Brown's biography on St. Augustine or Rist's book "Pagan Thought Baptized." Or Leszek Kolakowski's book "God Owes Us Nothing" about Jansenism. You should also read the Papal document Unigenitus which formally condemned Jansenism to see what the Catholic Church really opposed. They will disappoint your prejudices, but only the truth will set you free. As to the Second Council of Orange, you apparently have never read about it. The Council said that God predestines people only to glory, not to damnation. In other words it flatly condemned the idea of double predestination (so dear to the black soul of John Calvin) as Manichean heresy. There is NO JOY for any Protestant who studies Orange II.

 

[In support of the concept of Total Depravity] See Job 25

 

You really are a Manichean, aren't you Arie? Can't you tell the difference between the Creator/creature distinction and that between a righteous God and the morally reprobate. Is the moon a sinner? Of what crime are the stars guilty? Is God morally disgusted by worms? This section in Job has NOTHING to do with man's moral failings. It refers rather to our metaphysical lowliness before God.

 

You want to believe that the Catholic Church was corrupted since (at the latest) the 4th Century and that I am a dupe of plotting priests to enslave my soul to dead works. Meanwhile, all of the Protestant "reformers" were sweetness and light. They were so innocent that butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. They overturned 1500 years of Church practice and belief and introduced innovations into Christianity that contradicted the very words of Scripture along with the solemn teachings of the Magisterium. None of these guys could agree with the other and so now we 28,000 disparate sects in Protestant Pandemonium whose one sure principle is that no matter what else may be true the Catholic Church could not have been right about anything during the "reformation." Can you understand why I find this to be beyond credibility? I have given you lots of resources to check on. I now challenge you. Luther specifically stated that humans could be justified only by a fiduciary faith. That is a "saving faith" described in your Protestant literature as composed of assensus (faith proper), fiducia (hope). He specifically excluded caritas (charity) and went so far as to say that a saving faith was unformed by charity. Fine. In Heaven, there will be no faith, because we shall see the Beatific vision for ourselves and will know all truths with absolute certainty. In Heaven there will be no hope, because there will be nothing left to hope for. All of our hopes and dreams will have come true...and more besides which we cannot even imagine. What then will be left for us? CHARITY ALONE: Love of God for his own sake and love of neighbor for the love of God. If one follows the Protestant paradigm for a "saving" faith and cultivates faith & hope without love, it means that one will arrive in Heaven unprepared to be there.

 

Yes, it is true that in Romans 15:16, Paul does speak of "priestly service" although this may be another way of saying "holy service."

 

No it isn't. You can't go and change the biblical text to make it conform to your systematic theology. You should submit yourself to every word in scripture if you are going to be loyal to the Sola Scriptura principle. But when Luther and Calvin contradict scripture, you make void the word of God to preserve their preferences. Curious, isn't it?

 

Certainly Paul's "priestliness here is not connected with anything except the once for all (apax) sacrifice of Christ.

 

Read the text. It is concerned with St. Paul's MINISTRY! It says nothing about Christ's sacrifice per se. St. Paul sees HIMSELF as a priest. Period. Just admit it and deal with it. As an aside, the Christian priesthood derives its power solely from Christ and his sacrifice. There is no new sacrifice for sin. Instead, we participate in the SAME sacrifice as he instituted AT THE LAST SUPPER, carried out at Calvary and completed when he became a living ascension (Hebrew: Olam) offering on Ascension Thursday. Jesus explicitly offered himself for sin ONLY at the Last Supper when he literally functioned as a priest. On Calvary, he was a willing victim. On Ascension Thursday, he entered the Heavenly Temple and like a High Priest continues to offer himself as an eternal sacrifice for sin. There was no sacrificial language from the Cross. The Passion Narratives begin at the Last Supper and culminate with Our Lord's death. It is the story taken as a whole that establishes Jesus' death as a sacrifice and not merely a martyrdom. When Jesus tells the Apostles to "do this in anamnesis of me," he is ordaining them as priests of the new covenant. The word anamnesis is used in the LXX to refer to sacrifices in the Temple and makes this clear.

 

However, when you claim that Israel was ruled by priests before they had kings, you are forgetting that Israel was led (rather than ruled) by Judges before they had kings.

 

All the Judges to my knowledge were of priestly lineage -- even Deborah! In fact, all of the Prophets were also of priestly lineage as far as I can tell. Sorry, Arie. All of the OT authority -- except for the Kings -- was PRIESTLY.

 

That Christ told His Apostles that they had the power to forgive sins does not mean that He gave them the authority to forgive sins for the payment of money. That was Luther's issue in his Ninety Five Theses.

 

The 95 Thesies were about Indulgences and NOT the fogiveness of sins. No one has ever charged money for Baptism or Absolution. Indulgences do not forgive sin. Your comment here is provocative, insulting and false. Period. Luther LIED when he said that people were being forced to pay for the Plenary Indulgence offered by Tetzel. There were alternative means of obtaining the Indulgence which did not involve a contribution. I explained this to you in detail previously.

 

In the verses that you cite from 2 Peter 2, the words of Peter are not addressed to the clergy but to all the people of God

 

Were all of the people in Israel prohets, priests or kings, Arie? Of course not. The words in St. Peter's Second Papal Encyclical were addressed not to the people, but to the CHURCH as a community. What he said was true about the community, not about the individuals who made up the community.

 

I am afraid that you do not comprehend the essence of priesthood. The reference is to the privileged place of the priest in the O.T. The essence of priesthood is the privilege to go beyond the outer court of the temple into the Holy Place.

 

No it isn't! Priesthood is spiritual fatherhood.

 

All of the male heads of household were priests before God from Adam through Abraham and his sons until the Golden Calf incident at Sinai. After that, God singled out the male descendants of Aaron to serve him as priests as a punishment for idolatry. The essence of OT priesthood is for a MAN to stand before God to intercede for his children. In the NT, Jesus is our redemeer (Hebrew: gaol). He is our elder male relative who rescues us from our bondage to sin. In essence, he becomes our spiritual Patriarch. The Christian ministerial priesthood carries on this work of Christ in word and sacrament. The priesthood of the believer is given to us all at baptism (which is very much like the OT ordination ceremonies with its ritual washings). All Christians -- men and women -- are given the adoption of sons and are heirs to the kingdom of heaven. They are capable of offering their own lives and spiritual sacrifices to God. But the authority to be a Patriarch and to forgive sins remains with Christ. He delegates that authority solely to the ordained: his Apostles/Bishops, Presbyters/Priests and Deacons.

 

The Calvinist doctrine of Total Depravity is not a Protestant innovation. It essentially is a restating of Augustine of Hippo's views on human depravity.

 

That is a lie. St. Augustine NEVER taught total depravity. He taught precisely what Trent taught about it. Please read McGrath, Iustita Dei vol 2, pages 15-22. Also, Fr. John Hugo's book St. Augustine on Nature, Sex, and Marriage.

 

The doctrine of Total Depravity does not actually teach that we are utterly depraved by nature, but that all of our faculties have been aversely effected by sin. Sin is always something very, very serious because we sin against a God who is to pure of eyes to behold iniquity.

 

Read Calvin's Institutes. In it he says the very best acts of men are sins. You are not representing your tradition correctly. As to the idea that "all of our faculties have been adversely effected by sin" what you are doing is claiming that sin exists in human beings below the level of moral agency. Sin must be deliberate. It cannot be automatic. Otherwise it isn't sin. As such, your religion's views are Manichean to the core. You believe that sin is imputed to man even when he intends no disobedience to God. This is not Christian teaching but PROTESTANT innovation.

 

Paul is pointing out in the opening chapters of Romans that there is none righteous, no not one. Paul's purpose is to point out that no one can be justified before God by works of the law, that all persons, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin.

 

Read your Bible! Mary was righteous! St. Joseph was righteous! Sts. Elizabeth and Zechariah were righteous! Of course none of them were righteous by their own power but solely through the grace of God. All men are sinners, but that does not mean that all men are "totally depraved." That theory is a Calvinist innovation and is NOT Christian. When St. Paul talks about no one being justified by "works of the Law" he is saying that no one is righteous by being Jewish and performing "mitzvah Torah." Elsewhere in Romans he says:

 

The only law that St. Paul is speaking of in Romans 3:28 is the JEWISH Law. St. Paul never says that the Gentiles are totally depraved. St. Paul apparently believed in prevenient grace among some outside of the House of Israel which might allow them to be judged favorably before God on par with righteous Jews. This is confirmed from Acts:

 

When the Bible refers to people as "righteous" it refers to them as being righteous by human evaluation.

 

Don't be absurd! Once again you make void the word of God to extol the traditions of mere men (and apostates at that).

 

Yes, but even Mary expresses herself in the words "and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior."

 

Mary was redeemed from sin at the moment of her conception solely through the merits of Christ in anticipation of his redemptive work. She achieved nothing by her own merit. As such God was her savior from sin. That is Catholic doctrine.

 

Unfortunately, there is no real basis for this "donum super additum." What Adam enjoyed before the fall was God's favor, but we can hardly speak of grace where no sin is present. Grace is always God's favor despite our sins.

 

Now you are inventing new meanings for grace? Grace and favor are used interchangeably in the NT. The term "favor" doesn't exhaust the meaning of the word "grace", but it is clearly of the same order. You are inventing new distinctions and definitions in order to save your prot systematic theology from internal contradiction, but it won't work. The donum super additum was derived by St. Augustine and his theology of Grace. If you deny it, you must repudiate St. Augustine. You see, if Man cannot merit before God by his own natural powers, then this was just as true before the Fall as after it. In both cases, Man required supernatural power to remain in fellowship with God. If you say that Adam and Eve were in right relationship before God without supernatural grace/favor before the Fall, then it is YOU who are the Pelagian.

 

Here you are referring to an area in which many Protestants have followed Rome. "The conversion of Adam" as some Puritans called it. Unfortunately, in both the O.T. and the N.T., Adam stands for man in his fallensess. There is no record in Scripture of Adam ever having repented.

 

All of which is irrelevant to the question of the donum super additum. By the way, Adam does not stand for Man in his falleness, but for Humanity as a whole. Otherwise, Jesus could not have been called "the New Adam."

 

The so called "mother promise," of Genesis 3:15 "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head and he will bruise your heel," is not addressed to Adam at all but to the serpent and mentions Eve but not Adam.

 

You bet. This is a foreshadowing of the virgin birth and the special place of Mary in the economy of our salvation. By the way, you have mistranslated the third clause of Gen 3:15. The three clauses of this verse are "heychast" and represent synonomous parallelism with the three fold repetition common in Hebrew. Each clause is actually saying the same thing in a slightly different way. St. Paul uses this:

 

Also the Hebrew pronoun for "he" uses the same letters as for "she." The gender can only be distinguished by the vowel points (which were added by the Rabbis in the 8th Century AD) and by the gender of the verb "to crush." In Hebrew, an unusually forceful act by a woman was often described with a masculine verb.

 

A proper translation would be as follows:

 

Note the parallels: you/woman; your child/her child; she bruises you/you bruise her.

 

There is no doubt that Mary bruises Satan only through her Divine Motherhood and the prerogatives granted to her in accordance with it, but it is prophesied that by her (i.e., the Woman- see Rev 12:1ff) the Serpent is defeated. The child in the 2nd clause is NOT the primary subject of the prophecy though we know that He was the real cause of Satan's defeat. It is granted to The Woman to defeat the Serpent in vengenance for his tempting of Eve in the first place.

 

Unfortunately, Luther was very fond of cryptic statements and also fond of beer, and that made for a bad combination. However, just because Luther said something does not mean that I agree with him.

 

I am glad that you don't. But you said that the reformers "never told people that it was alright to sin." I have shown that in fact Luther did and that this idea was consistent with his "theology" of justification. That is one reason why we reject him as thoroughly unfit to sit in judgment on the One True Church founded by Christ. There was nothing "cryptic" about it. Many have tried to take Luther's contradictions and turn them into paradoxes but Doctor Martin would not have it! He meant what he said and called reason "a whore and a strumpet" along with other things even I am too polite to mention. Go and reads that letter to Jerome Weiser. It was anthologized in a collection of Luther's "Spiritual Counsels." I hope you will be as disgusted with it as I was.

 

Yes, but the Latin Vulgate was not a very accurate translation either. That is why some of the older Protestant translations sometimes go astray. The KJV, for example follows the Vulgate rather than the Greek in the opening verses of Luke.

 

The Textus Receptus used by most Protestant translators until Westcott and Hort was also seriously corrupted. Granted that the Vulgate needed improvement, it was nevertheless right in several places where the TR was wrong. For example, the Vulgate does not contain the doxology to the Lord's Prayer which the TR includes. Protestants added the doxology and still act as if it is a legitimate part of that prayer. In fact, the UBS and Nestle-Aland 25th Ed. texts exlude the doxology as a minor gloss. It was not in any of the the 4th Century Codices (Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, or Vaticanus). So the cath version of the Lord's Prayer based on the Vulgate is more accurate than the prot version. The Vulgate is itself a window into the critical texts of the 4th Century and needs to be taken serious as a good source for the Early Church's biblical text.

 

Sorry pal, but we don't find the Apostles or the Savior recommending that practice.

 

You mean you don't find it in the NT. So what? If the Christian Church has done this from the very beginning as the Church Fathers make clear, this is a CHRISTIAN tradition. There is far more support Biblically and Historically for this doctrine than for the prot heresies denying baptismal regeneration, the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and the priestly nature of Christian ministry. And even your own religions admit that "justification by faith alone" was only "properly taught" from the 16th Century onward and not before. Looks like you have your own innovations, Arie, which have a much worse pedigree.

 

When you challenge a Sicilian, it is metaphorically kicking the proverbial junkyard dog. I have been debating Protestants for 25 years. I ask no quarter and give none. It is time that we caths got our licks in where prots have slandered and lied about us. It really irks me that you guys don't do your homework and believe all the prot reformation polemics as if they were Gospel. Also, Martin Luther and I have a very similar temperament and sarcastic writing style. That is one reason why I have never been fooled by the feigned piety in his writings. I'm sorry if I got a little rough on you. I apologize if I offended you. But you do spout back bilge which any reasonably read person in this area would know to be false. You were, after all, indoctrinated into your religion by people who hated the Catholic Church and only wanted to destroy it. Might I recommend that there are two sides to the Reformation story and that you have apparently never heard our side? I get really weary of having to make up for the educational deficiencies of my opponents. Nothing personal, but you need to check out some of the references I've given you to see what I am talking about. I would like to extend to you and yours a wish for a happy and holy Christmas. Let us act like separated brethren and not enemies from now on.

 

You certainly sent me a long letter, it printed out to more than seven pages.

 

You were lucky. I once wrote a 28 pager in response to a Dispensationalist on a Protestant bulletin board. For some reason, they didn't want to spend the memory to store it. ;-)

 

Fair enough. I will respond in kind.

 

1Pt:2:5: Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

 

Which Catholic Church has always taught. But you keep making the same mistake. Why can't you see that just as the OLD Israel had a ministerial priesthood, the New Israel MUST also have one? Every Israelite offered spiritual sacrifices to God for himself. The ministerial priests offered sacrifices for the COMMUNITY which were even more spiritual. The Eucharist is the most spiritual sacrifice of all. Has been the tradition of historic Christianity from the very beginning that St. Peter was referring to the Church as a whole and referring to the ministerial priesthood in particular here. I have the choice between your 16th Century apostate view and that which was supported by ALL of the Church Fathers, Doctors, and Councils which went before. Your views were motivated by a desire to usurp authority from the historical episcopate and place it into the hands of rapacious middle-class religious want-to-be's. The big question to be asked about this revolt against Tradition is "Cui Bono?" The answer was the rebels and their desire to invent a new religion consisting of their middle-class mores "divinized." Nolo contendere. I stand with Tradition against innovation.

 

It is not. It is connected with his OFFERING of himself which my quotations show. Please disabuse yourself of the confusion of sacrifice with the death of the victim. It is incorrect and a common error among Protestants since the 16th Century. Please see the book "Sin, Redemption and Sacrifice" bu Fr. Lyonnet and Fr. Sabourin for a more complete exposition of the point.

 

You implied the he was a Catholic because of his opinions concerning the disparity in teaching between Luther and Augustine. Alister is a VERY important scholar in this regard and you should look at his book. Also, let me recommend Peter Toon's book "Justification and Sanctification" which makes the same point. Also Fr. Francis Clark's book "Eucharistic Sacrifice and the Reformation."

 

If you read Talmud, you see that the conventional practice was more complicated at the Temple than in the wilderness. There were actually several types of sacrifices involving animals some of which involved burning the whole animal, some only parts of the animal, and in some cases only the blood. In those where the carcass was not burned whole and entire, the animal's parts were distributed some to the priest and some to the offerer. In some cases there was a ritual meal involving priest and/or offerer. ALL of the sacrificial meals were accompanied by a meal (cake) offering and a libation (wine) offering in which part was eaten by the offerer and part burnt on the altar. The point is that the death of the sacrifice was not offered to God by the priest: just some body parts representing the life of the animal. A fellowship meal with sacred bread and wine usually accompanied this specially with the sin offering.

 

Exactly. Thus killing was NOT part of the priestly role originally. The death of the sacrificial animal did not comprise the sacrifice since the priest normally did not have a part in it. It was the subsequent offering of the victim by the priest that comprised the sacrifice per se. That is why the Last Supper was the true sacrificial moment in the passion narratives, NOT the crucifixion!

 

Arie, read your own quotation. The sacrificial animal in the wilderness was killed by the lay offerer before the LORD. The priests may have watched but they generally played no part in it. (Later in the Temple, that would change and Levites would assist in the slaughter.) The slaughter of the Passover Lamb by the head of household was not a sacrifice anymore than that of the other animal victims in the Aaronic cultus. The sacrifice of the Passover Lamb proper was when the blood was poured out at the base of the altar by the priests later on.

 

Take this distinction too far and one must ask what "spiritual sacrifices" the lay priest of the NT are supposed to be making. I would suggest that you read up on the topic.

 

Quite the contrary, they were an integral part of EVERY sin offering/sacrifice.

 

No it wasn't. You are 450 years out-of-date in your understanding of the sacrificial mcultus. This was one of the serious deficiencies of the "reformation" position. Modern scholarship does not accept the substitutionary idea. You should read some of Jacob Milgrom's work in this area, especially his commentary on Leviticus 1-8 for the Anchor Bible Series. Lyonnet and Sabourin talk about this too. The sacrifice is an EXTENSION of the offerer, not a substitute. The laying on of hands over the animal does not transfer guilt to it. It merely indicates ownership. It was this misunderstanding that led to the ill-fated theory of "penal substitution" which led to some many problems in Calvinism. (For a good debunking of penal substitution, see John Stott's excellent book "The Cross of Christ.")

 

How can the BODY and BLOOD of Christ be REALLY present if they are not SUBSTANTIALLY present? To claim that they are "spiritually" present is an oxymoron because then it is the SPIRIT of Christ that is present NOT his BODY and BLOOD.

 

Surprise! It is both. The Biblical understanding of mediation is a facilitation. The grace of God does not come "through" the priest, but with his assistance it is communicated directly from God to the worshipper. I actually receive the Body and Blood of Christ directly at a validly confected Eucharist. The priest merely puts it on my tongue.

 

The priest functions as an alter Christus: a proxy/vicar for Christ. It is actually CHRIST who confects the sacrament. That is why the priest repeats the words of Jesus at the consecration. He does not say "This is HIS body." He says "This is MY body." As such, the priest has no power in himself to do anything. You should read Robert Sokolowski's book "Eucharistic Presence : A Study in the Theology of Disclosure."

 

Sad, but true. I think the "reformation" was a punishment sent to the Catholic Church for the sins of presumption and complacency among its ministers and members.

 

I think you are way off base there. Luther struck a cord among the Germans who were ripe for a rebellion against any international authority. Also, his was a bougeousie revolution, not a religious one. He invented a new religion which tickled the fancy of the urban middle class. That was why Rome took notice of him.

 

Luther underwent a process of radicalization which started in 1509 but continued over the next 3 decades. His position changed several times during that period. In fact there were some positions he argued that he didn't really hold. (Read Jared Wick's book "Man Yearning for God" which quotes a little known letter of Luther's in which he admitted this about some of the things in the 95 theses.) He contradicted himself many different times in many different ways say things to one audience that he denied to another. (You should really read Rix's book about this.) As such, there was confusion as to what theological positions he actually held. He was therefore more of a demagogue than a "reformer."

 

Up to a point, many people (including Erasmus) thought that Luther was just another Savanarola type railing against the corruptions in the Church. It was not until much later (mid 1520's) that Luther's true colors were seen.

 

Please also note that Luther was totally unfamiliar with real Catholic doctrine. He had been educated soley in the via moderna Augustana which was the 16th Century equivalent of the modernism of the 19th & 20th Century. Luther was never exposed to St. Thomas Aquinas or the mainstream scholastics until well after his intellectual break with the Church which is dated to 1516. He couldn't understand their methods, and so he made some scatological comments and in a public bonfire in 1520 burned a copy of the Summa Theologiae along with the books Canon Law and the Bull Exurge Domine which excommunicated him. Since Luther had been "educated" by the modernists like Staupitz, I am not surprised that they did not recognize REAL Catholic doctrine.

 

You need to read some REAL history and discard those Protestant propaganda tracts. Luther was interviewed by the greatest theologian of his day, Cardinal Cajetan, in 1518 within 18 months after the 95 Theses were published. (N.B. - The 95 These were NOT nailed to the Wittenburg Cathedral door. That was a dramatic fiction invented by Melancthon. Read Iserloh's book on the subject.)

 

Cajetan wrote a letter to the Pope immmediately after the interview in which he stated that there were 2 problems with Luther: 1) he attributed a meaning to the word "faith" that was not found in Scripture or Tradition, & 2) he was contemptuous and dismissive of all Papal or Conciliar teaching. Cajetan had Luther's number right up front. What he stated in his letter is precisely what was condemned in Exsurge Domine and the Council of Trent. An excerpt of this letter was published in the book "Cajetan Responds" edited by Fr. Jared Wicks.

 

You should also know that from 1516 onwards, Luther was already referring to the Pope as the "anti-Christ" long before the 95 Theses were even published. He used to give false words of praise and loyalty to the Pope in some of his letters before 1520 but this was our hypocrisy. Long before he was excommunicated, Luther had ceased being a Catholic not only theologically but ecclesially.

 

I don't know the details. I would have to look it up. But this is not germane to our discussion as it has nothing to do with the "reformation." We might more fruitfully ask of what crime Cardinal Pole's mother was guilty when Henry VIII had her beheaded. (By the way, there is an active cause for Savanarola's canonization which JPII favors.)

 

Arie, that is NOMINALISM, not the Bible. The Bible knows nothing of the legal fiction of "imputed" righteousness. Both the Greek word logisthemai and the Hebrew equivalent often translated by prots as "imputed" actually refer to "reckoning:" that is reasoning to a conclusion based upon the evidence. Only a Nominalist who did not believe that things appeared as they were in themselves (res in se) and whose epistemology excluded the knowledge of universal truth could possibly come to the conclusion that we only appeared righteous. The Bible extolls Realism and righteousness is seen as going to the bone, not being externally imputed. Please note this quote from my Lord and Savior:

 

Jesus condemns the Pharisees for being EXACTLY what the "reformers" want all Christians to be: whitewashed tombs! To the contrary of your view, Jesus tells them they must clean their inside so that their outside will truly reflect what is on the inside. That is why there must be Baptismal regeneration. This is another reason why I think the "reformation" theology is a demonic deception. It contradicts what Jesus himself taught as his standard.

 

As to the distinction between "justification" and "sanctification" let me show you something:

 

This is synonymous parallelism in the three fold Hebraic idiom. (In Hebrew this would be heychast.) Each of the three statements is saying the same thing in a different way. In this passage St. Paul makes it clear that Baptism, justification and sanctification are three ways of saying the same thing. Thus Scripture refutes your Protestant systematic theology.

 

This passage is irrelevant to the discussion. It is not talking about the ordo salutis, or with the individual Christian's spiritual progress. It is talking about the Kingdom of God which first starts from the death of a seed (Christ), then a blade (the apostolic preaching), then the ear (converts to Christianity), then the full corn (the Church at the end of the world when the harvest is to begin). There is no mention here of individual Christians, imputation, salvation, justification, or sanctification. Yours would be considered [imputed? :-)] a very poor example of allegorical interpretation.

 

We have never said that. Purgatory IS Heaven: its ante-chamber actually. And it is part of the work of the Holy Spirit to prepare the faithful for heaven even IN Purgatory. Note well:

 

Thus St. Paul agress with our views and not with yours.

 

Arie, if you have specific historical complaints about abuses, fine. But don't go to satiric fiction and act as if that is sufficient evidence for abuse. The mere fact that some wise-guy writes a story insulting the Church and alleging abuses means nothing. Would such a book be allowed as evidence in a court of law? Of course not! It proves NOTHING at all except that some fellow has a malicious imagination. It is always possible that some fiction may mirror real incidents but then I would demand that you produce historical evidence of those alleged incidents. With regard to these particular works, we know that they are PURELY fictional.

 

Because of the political problems that Luther caused about it for one thing. And as I said the Church is always in need of reform. Eventually, the Church discipline was changed so that even the hint of scandal which Luther raised would not trouble the faithful. While the St. Peter's indulgence preached by Tetzel was not done improperly, there were other incidents of alleged simony which had a basis in fact. There may also have been some problems with the St. Peter's indulgence that were not Tetzel's fault. The fact that the Church forbade a benign practice in order to prevent misunderstanding is proof that she is sincere in her beliefs and is sensitive to her image.

 

Do you also understand your own duplicity in raising this issue? What if the Church had NOT changed its practice? Then you would have said that she was hopelessly corrupt. the fact that she did is interpreted by you as an admission of guilt. You put us in a no win situation. Your mind was made up and no matter what we did you would condemn us anyway.

 

You really don't understand the benefice system. The Papacy did not have an income from investments at that time since the rise of investment banking was just starting. The money came in and was spent. You cannot compare the 16th Century economy of Europe to the one in the 20th. It is not the same and frankly the Church could not have survived without calling in these benefices. (For an in depth look at this I recommend Dr. John Rao's cassette tape series on the Reformation available through the Dietrich von Hildebrand Institute, 11 Carmine Street #2C, New York, NY 10014.)

 

Running an international Church required a lot of money and the Papal income from the Romean estates was insufficient for the task. Many of the absentee bishops were working in curial or nunciate posts. The same is true for some of the absentee priests who did the work in the curia.

 

Eventually, there were too many absentee clerics and Trent put an end to the practice. Please note that the last absentee bishop problem of which I am aware was in Elizabethan England under a Protestant monarch.

 

Why so cynical? Couldn't it be possible that Jansen was a formal heretic and that the Jesuits were trying to protect the faithful from false teaching? The eventually condemnation of Jansenism demonstrates that it was entirely justified for them to be leary of false "augustinianism."

 

My understanding is that Jansen's book did not teach many of the things that were condemned in Unigenitus. But Jansen's followers did teach them. No less a person than Alister McGrath identified in a pamphlet on the ARCIC joint statement about justification that Trent was not as hard for evangelicals to deal with as Unigenitus.

 

Pascal was a blatant controversialist who misrepresented his opponents. This is very well known in academic circles. Pascal put the most negative spin he could on the Jesuits. Once again. I would recommend that you forget the fictional literature and the controversialist stuff and stick to historic sources. Pascal's only usefullness now is in his devotional material. We expect such stuff to be exaggerated.

 

Be careful about Warfield. His book on Calvin and Augustine is not very good. He was after all an apologist and not an Augustine scholar. I was thoroughly unimpressed with it. Rist's book on Augustine's thought is better and more accurate.

 

Besides it doesn't matter what Jansen wrote or thought. It was Jansenism that was condemned, not Jansen. The points made in Unigenitus were correct even if Jansen never held the views condemned there.

 

The only one that dealt with the Augustinian teaching was Orange II. Reread it carefully and you will see what I mean. It was NOT Protestant by any stretch of the imagination. The decrees at Trent were made in full awareness of Orange II and in conformity to its teaching. (McGrath documents this.)

 

What Job was referring to in the verse I quoted is that God is holy and we are not!

 

You failed to recognize the difference between the creator/creature distinction and the moral problems of humanity vis a vis God. By confusing the two, you are an implicit Manichean.

 

There were no pagan influences. There was the "baptism" of some pagan customs taken over and given new meaning by the Church but that is not the same thing. If you want to claim pagan influences, then name them specifically and I will refute each one of them for you.

 

An exaggeration brought on by prot bias and not an examination of historical fact. In Roman Law they had an old principle, "Abusis non tollit usis" (Abuse does not forbid use.). The mere fact some people MAY have abused the cult of the saints does not mean that it was bad in itself. In the Catholic world at that time, no such abuse as you describe existed except among the most ignorant and superstitious. That was where the Inquisition came in. It prosecuted people who held such views.

 

It is true. Leo X was not a reforming Pope. But part of the problem was that Luther, Calvin et al insisted on introducing new doctrines that tickled their ears and refused to submit to the Magisterium and to the real teachings of St. Augustine and the Church Fathers.

 

Where did you get that idea? The Church is ALWAYS in need of reform. One has to move with the times. Trent merely re-emphasized the teaching of previous Councils (especially Florence and Lyons) and condemned the innovations of the Protestants. It also initiated the REAL reforms that the Church needed which were carried out during the Counter-Reformation. VCI condemned German Idealism (i.e., Kant), Gallicanism and Febronianism. VCII ended the Counter-Reformation and prevented the Catholic Church from turning itself into a mere denomination by re-emphasizing her universal character.

 

I was lucky. I was a cradle Catholic and always practiced my faith. During medical school at Vanderbilt in Nashville, TN I had an adult "committment" experience when God called me to deeper study of His Word and his Church. I have trie to cultivate an attitude of gratitude for all the blessing God has given me.

 

The priest functions as an alter Christus: a proxy/vicar for Christ. It is actually CHRIST who confects the sacrament. That is why the priest repeats the words of Jesus at the consecration. He does not say "This is HIS body." He says "This is MY body." As such, the priest has no power in himself to do anything. You should read Robert Sokolowski's book "Eucharistic Presence : A Study in the Theology of Disclosure."

 

Do you have a Scripture text about this?

 

Read how St. Paul describes the Eucharist in 1Cor 11:23ff. The manner in which he wrote that section is the manner by which ALL eucharists in both East and West were celebrated. The priest speaks for Christ, not about him.

 

Also, remember:

 

[N.B. - We are to be MADE the righteousness of God, not merely imputed to be so.]

 

Luther did not really side with the bourgoise but with the German Princes, although the bourgoise were heartily sick of the deficiencies of the clergy and the monastic orders.

 

You need to read your history a little better. Luther sucked up to the Princes because they had the money and power. He catered to the Bourgeoisie in matters of morality and private religion. He told them that they were just as good as any clerics. In fact, he made the cleric just another one of them with a wife, children, and a "profession" as opposed to a vocation. The bourgeoisie were not "heartily sick" of any alleged "corruptions" among the religious orders. Go read the Augsburg Confessions and you will see that the only "corruptions" the Lutherans rejected were things like celibacy, asceticism, the Mass as a sacrifice, and Papal Authority. They were JEALOUS of professed religious and felt inferior to them. Luther gave the borgeoisie an excuse to look down on professed religious. That was why he was so popular.

 

To "reckon" is to "count as."

 

That is only one POSSIBLE translation, and the least likely. Check out most mainline NT translations today. They NEVER use the word "impute" to translate logizthemai in the critical passages of Gen 15:6 or Romans 4:5. The concept of imputation is alien to these two passages. "To reckon" means to understand or comprehend something as true. In a REALIST world, one is reckoned to be righteous because he IS righteous. It is only with a Nominalist worldview that external imputation makes sense. This Nominalist view is NOT Chrisitan. To the contrary of your view, Jesus tells them they must clean their inside so that their outside will truly reflect what is on the inside. That is why there must be Baptismal regeneration.

 

Purgatory is an invention of Christians who were lamentably ignorant of Holy Scripture.

 

It looks like you need a serious education. Purgatory was a JEWISH idea that Christianity inherited. It was always believed in by Christians from the beginning. St. Augustine was a believer in it. (I assume that you do not want to tell me that he didn't know his Bible?) So do the other Church Fathers. Look it up in Jurgen's "The Faith of the Early Fathers." If you read Rabbinic sources, you will find that the Rabbis in the time of Christ did not all believe in an eternal Hell. There was speculation about it, but the OT doesn't say anything about it. Jesus was the original exponent of the concept of Eternal punishment for sin. Most Rabbis believed in purgation after death in Sheol for the sinner followed by translation to the "Bosom of Abraham" which was the abode of the just souls.

 

The Jesuits were such a wild bunch at the time that even Catholic monarchs banned them from their territories. They were even out of favor with the Vatican for a time.

 

Rubbish. You don't know your history. The Jesuits were very EFFECTIVE in countering Jansenist and Protestant error. The Protestants hated them and maligned them unjustly. The Catholic Monarchs who didn't like them resented the Jesuit interference in their programs of exploitation. Have you ever seen the movie "The Mission" starring Jeremy Irons and Robert DiNiro? It is a fictional portrayal of the Jesuits missions in South America and accurately portrays the real reason why the secular authorities wanted the Jesuits suppressed. You see the Jesuits considered the Amerinds to be human beings and not animals. They fought against the slave trade and against exploitation of the Indians. They set up communal villages in the jungle far from the Europeans to protect the Indians. These settlements were economically and culturally marvelous. When the Jesuits were suppressed, the Spanish and the Portuguese destroyed these villages and enslaved the Indians. There is a good historical novel describing the Jesuit suppression that was recently published "A Danger to the State" by Philip Trower. You can also read about it in the many different books on Jesuit History by Fr. James Brodrick. There were weak Popes who caved in to political pressure and suppressed the Jesuits. One of my heroes -- Pope Pius VII - restored them. You can read about the history of this in the New Catholic Encyclopedia.

 

I wish you a very blessed Christmas. Are you still in the medical profession?

 

Full time in occupational medicine. I just do this apologetics stuff in between patients at my office. (That is why my spelling is not so good and my thought are occasionally disjointed.)